Monday, May 22, 2006

Process knitting

As Margene says, it's the process. I think that's why I've been doing so many socks lately. I love lace and I've been working on it a little. And I know at some some point lace will once again become my obsession, but right now I'm really enjoying socks. Nothing fancy, just plain old stockinette socks. This self-striping yarn is just fascinating, the way it stripes and I keep going just to see what it's going to do next. Round and round of nothing but knitting – very few purls, no yarn overs, no cables. It's so quick that even if it's about the process, I also feel like I'm making a lot of progress. I mean, I just started this pair last Friday night and look where I am already. Having just joined Summer of Socks and the Trek-along I'll probably be socked out by June.

And while on the subject of socks: Why should you always knit socks with 5 dpns instead of 4? Because in the unlikely (or likely depending on the person) event that you should lose (or forget back home) one of your needles, you can slip one needle's stitches to another needle and work on 4 needles until you find your needle (or get back home where you left the working needle laying on the desk). Gee, you'd think that had happened to me recently or something.

11 Comments:

For some reason I can't stay focused on socks lately. You are just churning them out, wow! They're all so pretty. And I must say my jaw fell open when I saw your silk "thread" you're spinning. Amazing.

My solution to losing dpns is to not use them. For the life of me, I can't get them to behave for me, so I am a circular needle convert. Props to you for having that special ability!

That's a good reason to use 5 needles and you have less chance of ladders, too. Looks neat! I'm holding off on my Trekking socks to get a couple pair finished up. This will be the summer of socks and lace, lace and socks, lace socks, sock lace? OK...I'll stop.

Ah, but the real question is what happens when you first lose the fifth needle and then the fourth, too. Not that this has happened to me recently or anything :)! I'm stuck knitting on metals now, until I can go buy another bamboo set of 0s.